Re: difftool -d symlinks, under what conditions

John Keeping [off-list ref] writes:

git-hash-object(1) implies that it will apply the clean filter and EOL
conversion when it's given a path to a file in the working tree (as it
is here).  Is that not the case?

Applying clean to smudged contents _ought to_ recover clean version,
but is that "ought to" something you would want to rely on?